Disney Literature Challenge

Although I am a big fan of Disney movies, there is nothing like reading the original book. The Disney versions of the tales tend to be watered-down, and I already had made it a challenge of my own to read the original versions of the books to my kids. I was happy to find this challenge as it fits with what I was doing anyway!

Here are the details copied from Sarah's blog:

Disney Literature Challenge

My name is Sarah, and I am a Disney fan. I'm also a children's
literature maven, which presents something of a contradiction. Any
book-nerd worth her salt knows how good old "Uncle" Walt Disney
shamelessly ravaged the storybook shelves to find material for his
animated features. Loads of purists detest Disney for his habit of
slashing and condensing the classics of children's literature into
cartoon corruptions. (For a primo example, read Tomie dePaola's 26 Fairmount Avenue.
I don't think Tomie's ever going to bring himself to forgive Mr. Disney
for what he did to Snow White.) The real kicker, of course, is the way
the Disney versions always seem to eclipse the real stories and doom the
author to obscurity. Seriously now, everybody knows Bambi and Mary Poppins,
but what kid has ever heard of Felix Salten or P.L. Travers? From an
author's point of view that stinks, but darn it, I still love my Uncle
Walt.

Now, some of my very favorite book people harbor strong
anti-Disney tendencies. (Cam, this means you. I'm betting on Linda and
Jim, too.) In their honor, and in hopes of putting a tiny chip in the
mountain of gratitude I owe them, I'm proposing a Disney Literature
Challenge. Let's dig up the uncorrupted originals, and see how these
stories looked before Uncle Walt had his way with them, shall we?

For
my part, I'm making this a long term, laid back endeavor. No time
limits, no minimums, no obligations. Pick the ones you like and quit
when you get sick of the whole idea. Wanna skip the bulky ones like
Dickens, Hugo and White? Be my guest. If the multimedia approach of
comparing the book to the movie appeals to you, go for it. I'm
particularly hoping some of the anti-Disney camp might be good sports
and take a refresher look at some of the films. Rereads are legal, even
encouraged.

If you're game for joining in, please
leave a comment. And if you post reviews of the books you read, I'd
love it if you'd take a second to link back to this post, leave a fresh
comment or ping me at: sarah(at)sarahmillerbooks(dot)com so I can keep
up with who's reading what.

(photo from jimhillmedia.com)

For
the sake of sanity and consistency (two things I'm rather fond of) I'm
confining the Disney Literature Challenge to works based on feature
length films that are completely or partially animated. And since I
still harbor a big fat soft spot for most things Disney, I'm cutting him
some slack in the fairy tale department. Stories that originated in
folklore, having no known author, shall be somewhat exempt and fall into
the bonus categories at the end. I figure every storyteller has a right
to adapt a folktale without being sneered at -- that's what folklore's
all about, after all.

This, then, is the official list. Film
titles are italicized, with the original stories they were derived from
immediately following in bold. An asterisk indicates books I've already
read myself.

*****

Pinocchio (1940)Pinocchio: The Story of a Puppet, by Carlo Collodi (1916)